The complex and dynamic networks of river system, vital for the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services, are under pressure due to human-induced water stress disrupting ecological processes. Recognition of the importance of rivers as source of life though has led to efforts towards protecting large rivers, nevertheless the conservation and management of smaller rivers remained mostly neglected, creating significant gaps in ecological restoration initiatives. In the present study, we assess the distribution and population status of Gangetic dolphin (Platanista gangetica) in the small rivers in the Ganga River Basin for integrating it into the basin wide river conservation strategy. We observed that the Gangetic dolphin inhabited most tributaries and sub-tributaries of the Ganga River, with a naïve occupancy rate of Ψ̂ = 0.68 ± 0.04 (mean ± SE) having 606 ± 142.77 (mean ± SE) individuals and accounts for 15% of the total Gangetic dolphin population in the Basin. The results of N-mixture and MaxEnt models demonstrate that channel depth, presence of meanders and water discharge were key predictors of distribution in these rivers, and the proximity to confluences were identified as a critical predictor. About 54% (620km) of 1150km of the surveyed river stretches exhibited suitability for dolphins in the Basin, indicated by a probability distribution score of ≥0.50. Combining this data with the available information, we delineated a total of 2850km stretch covering entire Ganga River System suitable for Gangetic dolphins within the Basin. Notably, the 620km of suitable stretches identified in smaller rivers represent 22% of the overall suitable stretches across the entire basin. These stretches were translated to conservation priority stretches for systematic conservation planning involving various stakeholders for improved river conservation in the Basin.

The failure resilience in cloud computing is becoming mainstream due to unprecedented growth in the cloud. In order to enhance cloud service reliability, various fault tolerance techniques have been suggested in the literature. Many cloud service reliability and availability issues are arising due to the failure of virtual machines (VMs). Therefore, this study contributes a new Threshold-Based Adaptive Fault Tolerance (TBAFT) approach in the cloud by amalgamating proactive and reactive approaches. Furthermore, in this paper, VM migration and replication are being utilized in the proactive approach, whereas retry is used as a reactive approach. Additionally, experimental validation is performed by comparing three benchmark fault tolerance approaches by incorporating the first fit and least full host selection policies. The obtained experimental results of the proposed approach are presented in terms of different metrics such as failure rate, throughput, migration, and execution time using CloudSim simulator.

Globally, the river ecosystems are threatened due to human-driven exploitation and indiscriminate resource use. The rate of species loss is a magnitude higher in these ecosystems, hence, identifying conservation priority areas as refugia, using the flagship-cum-indicator species approach can aid in long-term conservation of multiple species and ensure uninterrupted functioning of ecological processes. For effective conservation planning, we derived the site occupancy and abundance of Gangetic dolphin (Platanista gangetica) as a flagship species in the Ganga River Basin, and modelled their distribution vis-à-vis river conditions for identifying Conservation Priority Stretches (CPS). The study incorporates the first-ever basin-wide (4635 km river) Gangetic dolphin (GD) sightings to estimate range decline, abundance, and identify CPS of select rivers in the Basin. A total of 2151 sightings of surfacing dolphins with mean encounter rate of 0.55 ± 0.09 sightings/km of the river was observed from the surveyed stretch. The GD encounter rate varied significantly across the surveyed rivers (Analysis of Variance, F = 3.08, p < 0.001). We estimated 24.37 % decline in the dolphin distribution range in the basin since 19th Century. The estimated population size of the dolphin in the Basin was 3330 individuals ± 620 individuals (Confidence Interval 95 % = 2304–4668; Coefficient of Variance = 18.61) which varied across the river. The site occupancy and abundance were best predicted by channel depth (β = 0.82 ± 0.46), meanders (β = 02.56 ± 0.87) and individual rivers, whereas channel width (β = 0.11 ± 0.08) and survey efforts influenced detection probabilities. Further, we identified 610 km (12.2 %) of river stretches as high CPS in the Basin based on the prediction probability (≥0.70) of GD. Protection of these stretches is likely to ensure sustained reproduction of GD and provide refugia for other threatened species of the Ganga River and its tributaries, which is under increasing anthropogenic pressure.

In the present study, a new approach is suggested for the prediction of virtual machine (VM) failure based on the time series stochastic model. Motivated by various proactive fault tolerance techniques in the cloud, prediction of VM failure is highly anticipated. However, precise prediction of VM failure is extremely challenging and having a substantial impact on the proactive fault tolerance system. In proactive fault management techniques, it is essential to forecast the VM failure in the cloud and to characterize the system behavior. To predict the VM failure, we need to monitor the execution of VMs in the clouds dynamic environment and gather their health-related information. Therefore, in this paper, VM failure prediction is presented through a failure predictor module which is designed using time series based autoregressive integrated moving average. The suggested approach is tested on non-stationary failure trace of VM. It is observed that the proposed approach provides the failure prediction accurately.

Nowadays, with the advancement of technologies in modern life communication and networks, the secrecy of a cryptographic technique has become a strong necessity. The Vernam’s cipher which is a specific form of Vigenère cipher is gaining attention of researchers in the cryptography. But the modern encryption methods based on matrices available in the literature have their limitations to utilize them. Therefore, motivated by numerous cryptographic techniques available in the literature, this study presents a novel encryption approach for secure data communication. The proposed encryption approach is based on Vigenère cipher in finite dimensional vector space. Furthermore, the proposed approach relies on an eternal decomposition which is indiscriminate in the key selection inside key space. To add complexity by text scrambling, a weird substitution cipher key is added to provide maximum derangement in the encrypted text structure. Additionally, in the lights of Shannon’s secrecy, a comparison with usual matrix methods relying on LU —decomposition and eigenvalue decomposition is also discussed to justify the perfect secrecy thus achieved. It is revealed that the proposed encryption approach is a more versatile and perfectly secret encryption scheme that roots on the widening of key space to a mathematical structure, which not only fulfills the completeness with respect to the proposed decomposition but identical to message space as well.

A large-scale cluster network needs to be provided with a low probability of failure occurrence along with high service reliability and availability. Frequent faults are experienced in the cluster network, which results in job or task failure. Thus there is a need to detect and classify the fault in the High performance cloud (HPC). Therefore, the fault needs to be detected and classified in the HPC before failure occurs. This study proposes a new model for fault classification of the virtual machine in the HPC based on deep learning model. This research work is motivated by various existing fault prediction and classification techniques which uses different using machine learning approaches for fault classification. As the TabNet architecture deals with tabular data, the objective of the proposed model is to classify the fault in the HPC using deep learning based TabNet architecture. The tabular data from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is used to carried the experimental analysis in HPC. This data set includes the failure records of nodes in the HPC. The result obtained in terms of average accuracy advocates the strength of the proposed model. The Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Decision Tree, AdaBoost, Multi-Layer Perceptron, Gaussian Naive Bayes, K-Neighbors, Support Vector Classifier, Voting Classifier are taken into consideration for comparison purpose. The accuracy obtained by these model varied from 61% to 77%. The experiment demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed model with the accuracy obtained more than 98%.

Fault tolerance is the most imperious issue in the cloud to provide reliable services. Inherent vulnerability to failure hampers the performance and reliability of cloud services. Hence, to achieve reliability, fault tolerance becomes a mandatory feature which is hard to implement due to the dynamic infrastructure and complex interdependencies. Numerous fault tolerance techniques have been developed in the literature to address the challenges of cloud reliability. A recent research survey presented in this paper attempts to integrate the different fault tolerance architecture. This study presents a critical research review on various existing fault tolerance techniques to improve services reliability, availability, and applications execution in the cloud. A comparative analysis, based on different critical metrics like failure prediction, detection strategy, failure history, VM placement, and limitations, of the reviewed framework systems is also included in the paper. This review intends to facilitate the development of the new fault tolerance technique for the cloud environment.

Silica nanoparticles with a surface area of 673.60 m2/g and particle size of 8-12 nm were prepared using aerogel process (AP) followed by super critical drying. Zero valent Fe, Co, Pt, and bimetallic Fe/Pt and Fe/Co were loaded using an incipient wetness impregnation technique and subsequent reduction. Scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX) and transmission electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray (TEM-EDX) characterizations indicated fine dispersion of iron on AP-SiO2 +Fe system. Prepared nanoparticles were evaluated for the adsorptive removal of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) from water. Surface area normalized rate constant values indicated the adsorptive removal potential of prepared nanoparticles to be: AP-SiO2 + Fe/Co > AP-SiO2 + Fe > CM (commercial) SiO2 + Fe > AP-SiO2 + Co > AP-SiO2 + Fe/Pt > AP-SiO2 + Pt. Lower pH helped in accelerating the reactive removal of TNT on zero valent iron loaded silica. AP-SiO2 + Fe/Co system showed the maximum adsorption potential (74 mg/g) after five cycles.

Cloud computing is a process that provides services on virtual machines. Through the Cloud the information can be stored permanently on the Cloud servers which can be accessed by the Internet. The main aim of Cloud computing is to bring scalability in the system, due to which CPU and memory will be fully utilized. It is up to a customer that one can increase or decrease the resources in the Cloud according to his need. Cloud computing provides a fascinating possibility for libraries that helps to increase data storage capacity, reliability, performance, and reduce technology cost. This chapter elaborates how libraries and information centers can enhance their resources infrastructure with minimum cost, make effective systems, and provide better services to the user community at minimum cost and time. The aim of this chapter is to explain how librarian, information and computer science professionals and knowledge workers apply Cloud computing in the libraries and information center management. Chapter begins with the Cloud computing introduction in the context of Libraries which is called Cloud libraries. How libraries are using Cloud services today and what can the Cloud computing solutions do for the libraries are presented in detail. The chapter describes the potential role of Cloud computing to serve library needs. At the end of the chapter some live examples, where Libraries are adopting Cloud Computing, like Dura Space, OCLC, Library Thing, Library Cloud and Seer Suite are discussed.

Zero valent iron impregnated silica nanoparticles (Fe-0/n-SiO2) were synthesized using sol-gel process followed by supercritical drying, wet impregnation and hydrogen reduction. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by nitrogen Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (N-2-BET), Scanning Electron Microscopy, Transmission Electron Microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy-Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Vibrating Sample Magnetometer and X-ray diffraction techniques. Prepared samples were found to be magnetic with ultra-low density (0.048 g/mL) and high surface area (422 m(2)/g). Prepared samples were evaluated for adsorptive removal of Pb+2 (5, 10, 25 and 50 ppm) from contaminated water. Results indicated that the adsorption of Pb+2 was faster at lower concentrations (5 and 10 ppm) as > 8 0 % of Pb+2 was removed within 480 minutes. At higher concentrations, the adsorption was slower, and the removal efficiency of 51.24 and 21.78 % were observed for 25 and 50 ppm Pb+2 respectively, whereas for bare SiO2 nanoparticles, it was 39.64 and 14.04 %.

Cloud computing lacks control over physical and logical aspects of the system, which imposes profound changes in security and privacy procedure; hence, it needs a high level of security. Currently, many researchers and developments are being done to provide client service-level agreements regarding security issues. These researchers are attracted towards biometrics and its security applications, since it is based on biometric traits, thus providing a high level of security. Due to biometrics' benefits and cloud advantages, the collaboration of cloud and biometrics have open up wide areas this field. This chapter discusses some case studies of integration of biometrics and cloud computing.

Mobile Agent is considered as a striking technology for distributed applications. Its mobility feature makes it difficult to track and consequently performing communication between them becomes difficult. In multi mobile agent environment, a reliable communication is still a big challenge. In this paper, we have addressed the pros and cons of the existing different Mobile Agent communication protocols with their limitations. This paper also presents their parametric comparative study in tabular form.

Cloud computing is the future of the next generation architecture of IT solutions.Cloud provides computing resources on subscription basis over the internet.The Cloud data storage network includes a Third Party Auditor which has the power and capabilities that a client does not have.It is a trusted entity that has the access to, other than cloud and check on the exposed risk involved in cloud storage data on behalf of the client.In this paper, the problem of data security and integrity has been presented.Also, a scheme to provide maximum data integrity.In proposed scheme, existing fully homomorphic encryption is integrated with TPA auditing system is proposed.This scheme can audit data integrity without decrypting it.

Metal oxide nanoparticles such as silica, alumina, magnesium oxide and calcium oxide were synthesized using sol–gel process followed by super critical drying. In order to increase reactivity, nanoparticles were loaded with zero valent iron. Nanoparticles were then characterized for their surface area, porosity, particle size, surface morphology, compositions, thermal stability, etc. Nanoparticles showed particle diameter in the range of 5–60nm, surface area 23–673m2/g and microporous–mesoporous characteristics. Adsorption of nitrobenzene on prepared nanoparticles was performed in closed glass chamber and the kinetics parameters such as equilibration constant, equilibration capacity, diffusional exponent and adsorbate–adsorbent interaction constant have been determined using linear driving force and Fickian diffusion model. Zero valent iron loaded silica nanoparticles showed maximum adsorption potential (1155mg/g) and considerable ratio for adsorption capacity to surface area (3.14mg/m2) among impregnated systems.

To study the effect of ethanolic extract of leaves of the plant Jatropha curcas as a step towards developing a safe and ecofriendly therapeutic agent to combat the problems of tick and tick-borne diseases. Pulverised leaves of J. curcas were subjected to soxhlet extraction using ethanol. The ethanolic extract of J. curcas at different dilutions such as, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 mg / ml were tested against ticks using adult immersion test. The per cent adult mortality, inhibition of fecundity and hatching of laid ova were studied. The extract caused significant blocking of hatching of the laid ova by the treated ticks. Eclosion blocking effect of J. curcas extract is a promising property of the plant that can be utilized for controlling the population of ticks.

A bulk amount of unserviceable toxic cresylic acid waste has been disposed off in a safe and environmentally benign manner. A process to immobilize this waste into non-toxic solid cresol formaldehyde polymer has been developed. Initial study was performed for 1.0 Kg batch size for optimizing the process parameters and conditions, and on the basis of this data, process was scaled-up for bulk disposal (100 Kg / batch). The effect of ratio of reactants, type of catalyst [H2SO4, NaOH and Ca(OH)2], catalyst concentration, reaction temperature and reaction time have been studied in a batch process. Maximum immobilization in the 1.0 Kg batch studies was obtained when cresylic acid and formaldehyde were taken in a molar ratio 1 : 1.5 using NaOH as a catalyst. For bulk polymerization, a ratio of 1.0 : 1.2 (cresylic acid : formaldehyde) with NaOH {0.7 % (wt. / wt. of total charge)} was found optimum. The final polymerized product has been buried as per standard procedure in two brick lined pits and finally, the site has been declared as free from the toxic waste. Defence Science Journal, 2011, 61(5), pp.505-511, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.61.515

Nanoparticles of MgO, Al2O3, CaO and SiO2 were synthesized using aerogel route, and characterized by N2-BET, SEM, TEM, XRD, TGA and FT-IR techniques. Characterization indicated 2–75nm diameter nanoparticles with 135–887m2/g surface area and microporous–mesoporous characteristics. Prepared nanoparticles were tested for their adsorptive potential by conducting studies on kinetics of adsorption of diethylchlorophosphate under static conditions. The kinetic parameters such as equilibration constant, equilibration capacity, diffusional exponent and adsorbate–adsorbent interaction constant have been determined using linear driving force model and Fickian diffusion model. AP-MgO and AP-CaO showed the maximum (1011mg/g) and minimum (690mg/g) uptake of DEClP, respectively. All nanoparticles showed the values of diffusional exponent to be >0.5, indicating the diffusion mechanism to be anomalous. Hydrolysis reaction (identified using GC/MS technique) was found to be the route of degradation of DEClP.

Water resources regime in Kumaon Himalaya is a product of its specific environmental conditions. Major river systems, lakes along with a plethora of streams and springs are the main sources of water in this region. In pre-colonial Kumaon. communities took pride in their water systems and the local communities had the right of ownership over the use of local natural resources. They managed their water bodies on their own and this gave birth to a unique water harvesting civilization. Water was revered and regarded as sacred as is evidenced by the exquisite ornamentations and architecture of the structures around water bodies. An amazing aspect of these structures and systems is their longevity. But the colonial intrusion disturbed the community mode of management and gave precedence to private and state property rights over common property rights. The situation did not change even after Independence. The paper throws light oil the water harvesting methods and the linkages of water with forests. It also focuses On the watershed approach for managing water resources in the present scenario.